Kukla's Korner Hockey

With all games cancelled until Dec. 1 and the possibility of a 60-game season starting to fade, Bill Daly, the NHL's deputy commissioner, told QMI Agency Tuesday the two sides haven't decided on when more talks may be held.

And if union officials are waiting for the NHL to make another move to try to save the season, it's not going to happen. Daly said in an email the league isn't going to be tabling any new offers.

"We're done making proposals at this point," said Daly.

Talks broke off Sunday after an hour-long meeting in New York where nothing was accomplished. Both stood on ceremony and neither showed willingness to move as the lockout hits Day 60 Wednesday.

Daly said the league is willing to negotiate some points.

"The union knows where this is flexibility and room to negotiate," said Daly. "They also should know where there's not."

Comments

I understand that the NHLPA wants to protect their contracts. I’m not exactly sure how they think they are protecting their contracts by not taking an immediate 50-50 split and getting in 5.5 years.

Whether their contracts get eaten up in escrow in going from a 57% share to a 50% share or whether their contracts are dormant because of a lockout… either way they aren’t getting the full value of their deals.

A missed year of 6 means an immediate 16.7% loss of their current earning power over the term of the CBA. Going from 57 to 50% and assuming flat HRR means a 12.8% loss in earning power over the 6 year term of the deal.

There have been two really puzzling things to me in this whole bizarre process:

1) Hasn’t anyone explained that to the players yet?
2) Did the NHLPA actually think they were going to be able to walk away from this negotiation with a new deal without having to give stuff up? As in, real stuff… not just decreases in the rate at which they made more money?

Fehr is a very smart guy. I have to conclude he’s getting marching orders from the players because if he was giving counsel and they were heeding it there’d be hockey by now.

Right now, I think there’s a 70% chance there is no hockey at all this year… and that’s just amazing. I honestly didn’t think the NHLPA would be as stupid and emotional as they’ve been in this process, or that even if they were Fehr would haul them back into reality for a minute.

How could Bettman have not just instituted a 50-50 split 6 years ago? What a bleeping moron. Screwing that up and then screwing up expansion are two gigantic black marks.

Maybe someone has and the players don’t get it, just like you don’t get some people have principles that are more important than money?

It’s cute that you think this is about principles, shortly after saying you have no idea whether it was about principles, and that since this is completely and totally about money, these principles that matter more than money actually just end up being all about money.

Maybe you missed that I’m not stating opinions as facts, like you are?

If that’s actually your position and you’re not just reading from some lame internet mad lib insult guide because you may be profoundly unoriginal, I don’t think you have a very strong handle on what either of the words ‘opinions’ and ‘facts’ mean.

And let’s set a possible shaky understanding of terms aside for a second:

“just like you don’t get some people have principles that are more important than money?”

As a general rule you really ought to try not to be so obviously hypocritical within the very same thread. I appreciate you doing it here because it cracked me up and I’m always appreciative of those who provide humor, I’m just not sure being laughed at was exactly the reaction you were shooting for.

1) Hasn’t anyone explained that to the players yet?
Maybe someone has and the players don’t get it, just like you don’t get some people have principles that are more important than money?

Maybe they’re convinced if they cave and say “okay, we might break even by taking this awful deal now because AT LEAST WE’LL GET PAID THIS YEAR,” then all future CBA negotiations are doomed because the league can say the same thing the next time? Maybe losing a season is worth preventing their union from getting busted without a fight? But HD, maybe let’s just assume players can’t do simple math and should’ve just taken the first thing the league offered.

Maybe they’re convinced if they cave and say “okay, we might break even by taking this awful deal now because AT LEAST WE’LL GET PAID THIS YEAR,” then all future CBA negotiations are doomed because the league can say the same thing the next time?

First off, I’m not talking about just getting paid this year. I’m talking about what they could make over 6 years at 50% compared to 5 years at 57%, and there’s no chance at all they’d get 57% anyway.

Secondly, a 50-50 revenue split is eminently fair. It’s as good or better than the splits in the NBA and NFL.

Thirdly, negotiating the next CBA while the first one still isn’t done is really silly. Catch the ball before looking where you’re going to run.

Fourthly, the reason lockouts work so well for the owners is that most of them aren’t making any money from hockey ops anyway. If a 50-50 deal gets the NHL to the point where 20+ of the 30 guys are making money each year, owners are going to be FAR less willing to give away money in the pocket now for some amount of possible money in the pocket down the line, especially not when we’d be talking about a far smaller portion of HRR without having a 200 mil safety net subsidized by NBC to cover things.

But HD, maybe let’s just assume players can’t do simple math and should’ve just taken the first thing the league offered.

43, 46, 48, 50, 50+.

1) Which of those offers did I think the NHLPA should have taken?

2) Compare and contrast the answer to that question with an examination of what the phrase ‘first thing offered’ means.

3) This is why I’m surprised the odds of there being no hockey are so high. I assumed the players weren’t a bunch of idiots. Clearly I appear to have wildly overestimated their ability to understand finance and to make rational rather than emotional decisions.

Fehr should make them all watch the Godfather. Right now they’re all acting like Sonny and feeling great about pounding Carlo (Bettman) into the street with a garbage lid by hammering him in the press. In a few more scenes they’re going to be laying in a pile of ick on the Long Island Parkway because the owners are in full Barzini mode.

There’s still time for them to be Michael.

Of course, in this example hockey fans are Connie, which is a little depressing. Also, gross.